Conference Invitation!

Do you work in Higher Education on a short-term/hourly paid/insecure contact? Do you regularly work more hours than you are paid for, and still struggle to get by financially? Do the exhausting workloads and relentless demands of the neoliberal University prevent you from providing your students with a real education? If so, or if you’re permanently employed but share our concerns about these issues, then you need to join us on 21st November to share ideas for organising and supporting each other, and help develop a national strategy to effectively challenge casualisation in Higher Education.

FACE (Fighting Against Casualisation in Education) was started by casualised academics at SOAS, who, following significant victories achieved by their campaign Fractionals for Fair Play, wanted to reach out to other people organising against casualisation on the ground. FACE was launched at a conference in February 2015 attended by over 150 people from many different Higher Education institutions across the UK. At the moment we are a loose network of grassroots anti-casualisation campaigns, meeting monthly in either Birmingham, London or Manchester to find ways to support each other’s local campaigns, both to improve working conditions in the here and now, and also ultimately to end casualisation and the neo-liberalisation of Higher Education. FACE threw its support behind the hourly paid tutors and union activists at the University of Warwick who succeeded in forcing management to scrap TeachHigher (an outsourcing agency for academic staff at the University of Warwick). Some of us also attended the UCU National Congress to push the union to take more notice of its members on non-permanent contracts, and recognise that casualisation is going to be everybody’s future unless we stop it now.

Our 2nd national conference will offer skills workshops, space for analysing the shape of casualisation in the United Kingdom, and strategies for organising in a precarious workplace. We are also in the process of developing demands around which casualised workers can both unite nationally, and deploy at their own institutions to effect concrete improvements in pay and conditions. These will be discussed, debated and decided at the conference. We want your input! We are new, we are open, and we want you to come along, share your views and knowledge, and join us!

Click here to register your interest or to let us know of any access, dietary or childcare requirements, which we will do our best to accommodate. PLEASE LET US KNOW OF ANY SUCH REQUIREMENTS BY SATURDAY 14th NOVEMBER. If you will have real difficulty affording travel, please also let us know, as we may have limited funds available to defray expenses.